


when the sun shines it’ll shine out the clearer

by deathrae



Series: i've been through hell but i'm still standing [1]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, chapter two gets a GIANT spoiler warning for 2.8, do not read chapter 2 unless you have finished A Fragmentary Passage please!, exploration of trauma, implied wayfinder OT3, ptsd study, though it is pretty vague, unapologetic fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-04-13 02:19:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4504092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathrae/pseuds/deathrae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because sometimes teenagers go into hell and come back adults, but that doesn't mean they have all their shit together.</p><p>And asking for help is just as much a part of adulthood as standing on your own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (Cross-posted from Tumblr under the user name death-rae!)

“You can’t keep doing this,” Terra said, his spoon sitting half-forgotten against his oatmeal.

Aqua looked at him over the rim of the mug of coffee she was studiously attempting to drown herself in despite it having tripped and stumbled just a few steps shy of well-and-truly-burnt.

She watched him, looking thoughtful, judicious perhaps, but in truth, she was filtering through his words, trying to push them through the sieve that was her extremely tired mind and put them back together in a sequence that made logical sense. So far, it mostly seemed like gibberish, but she was pretty sure she had the gist of it. His expression was open, the way she remembered him, with no real trace of guile, and what she could read in it, in his face, in his eyes—blue! blue as they ought to be, blue as sapphires hidden among stone, no trace of sinister gold left—and in the gentle, sad swoop of his mouth, tugged down in a frown.

He was concerned, she decided finally, and with that in mind, she rearranged the syllables into a normal, rational sentence, and hoped that the delay in response had not seemed quite so long to Terra as it had to her.

“Doing what?” she asked, attempting to sound curious, because she wasn’t sure what he meant, but it came out as a vaguely slurred, bewildered mash of partially intelligible noise.

“You’re silencing your room,” he said, running his hand through his hair—brown! how many hours had she spent hoping she would see that color again?—to keep his voice from rising, though he seemed startlingly calm. “I know you are. I can feel the magic. I worry. Even Ven knows something’s up. Aqua…”

“It’s so I can hear if something comes in,” she said, interrupting him, scratching her short nails across the ceramic handle of her mug.

“We’re safe here,” Terra insisted, reaching out across the table to set his hand on her arm, squeezing once. “You know it. I know it. Ven knows it. It’s  _over_. Riku, Sora, all the others… they’re keeping this place guarded for us till we’re back on our feet. You  _know_  that. You don’t need your safeguards. Not right now.”

Despite herself, Aqua settled just a little under his grip, grateful for the touch of a human being, a real, warm human being with a heart. She set the mug down, stared into the murky brown depths as if they held the answers she needed. How did she explain? How could she hope to tell him what it was like? When she closed her eyes, she knew it was coming, knew it was only a matter of time before something touched her arm, or tugged at her clothes, tried to snare her wrist to keep her from casting as they clawed her chest open and pulled out her—

She jerked back to herself, jumping up out of her chair so fast she slammed her knees against the table leg. Her mug rattled and splashed coffee everywhere and Terra mirrored her, leaping out of his chair to avoid the dark concoction burning into his lap, then reached for napkins to wipe up the mess.

“I—I have to go,” she mumbled, and bolted before he could raise his voice to stop her.

When she stopped running and checked back in she was sitting by the little pond by the training yard, peering down into it. She grimaced. She was a  _mess_.

“No wonder Terra’s worried,” she muttered to herself, still trying to shake the habit of filling the long, interminable silences with her own words. She pulled at her face, examining the dark smears of color under her eyes, the hollow look to her cheeks, the utter lack of color in her face. She looked like a ghost. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure she wasn’t. She couldn’t remember when last she slept,  _really_ slept, and the fact that Terra had noticed something was wrong was bad enough. Something would have to give, and at this rate, it was going to be her sanity.

“Aqua?”

She jolted, smoothing her hair back behind her ears, trying to look normal despite forgetting how. Ven rounded the corner from the castle, and when he saw her, his bewildered frown immediately gave way to a wide, airy grin. He ran the rest of the distance to reach her, plopping himself down beside her on the rocks and leaning heavily against her shoulder.

“Hey, Ven,” she managed to say, her mouth twisting in a tired smile.

“You okay, Aqua?”

She looked down at him, wary. Had he conspired with Terra? Did he know that Terra had talked to her? Were they planning something?

She rubbed a hand over her face. That was ridiculous. It’s Terra and Ven. Neither of them had a nefarious bone in their bodies.

Ven kept looking at her, and she sighed heavily, ruffling his hair, feeling silly. He was too much like Terra—his face was open, easily read, and at the moment, full of worry and fear. His eyes, which she still remembered hard and gold and lusting for blood, were soft and blue and so  _sad_ as they focused on her face. There were deep lines around his eyes as he looked at her, making him seem somehow… older. Older even than he should be, even after the journey, the time apart, and the battles had aged him beyond his true years.

She opened her mouth to answer him, then closed it, and he watched her carefully, chewing visibly on the inside of his cheek to keep from pushing her. She looked down into the water again.

“No,” she said, finally, and perhaps the universe hated her because it was that word, that single word, when her voice cracked and broke, and even without looking directly at him she could feel the moment his heart broke for her. She could see, in the corner of her eye, the way his shoulders slumped, the way he bent under that one word, and then he surged forward, wrapping his arms around her shoulders, pulling her to the side so that she was easier to reach.

“I’m gonna try to be,” she said, trying to elaborate, so that there were more words in the air than just “no,” but her voice was hoarse and quiet and at first she was afraid he wouldn’t even hear her. “I’m trying, I am, I just…”

“It’s okay,” he said, and she stopped short, her chest feeling tight. “I get it. And we’re here.”

“Right,” she said, more breath than word, and for a little while, she leaned against him, letting him hold her.  
  
  
  
She forgot the spell that night.

Not that Aqua had not given a great deal of thought to the idea of deliberately leaving it off, per Terra’s implied request, but she had ultimately decided that her answer to Terra’s concerns was “not yet.” Even though she was ready to faint from exhaustion.

But evidently, that same exhaustion decided to take the choice out of her hands.

She woke up screaming. Again.

When Terra bashed the door open she was already out of bed, leaning on the sink in one corner of her room, her shoulders shaking on sobs she didn’t want to admit were happening, her face wet both from tears and the cold handful of water she’d splashed onto her face, the front locks of her hair dripping sporadically into the basin.

In direct, nonsensical contrast to her heightened state of alertness and fear, she barely flinched when Terra shoved the door open, blade in hand. She was just too tired to be startled, and that scared her more than almost anything else.

“Aqua…”

She heard the crackle of his keyblade disappearing, inhaled slowly when she heard his footsteps coming closer, exhaled shakily when his hand slid over her back, warm against her skin, his fingers skipping and catching on the straps.

“You’re wearing your armor,” he said. It wasn’t a question, but it also wasn’t an accusation. Merely an observation of fact.

She nodded, feeling dim and out of reach.

He guided her back to her bed, and without saying anything about it, he gathered a set of her pajamas out of a drawer, undressing her and bundling her into the new clothes like she was a child. He set her old clothes aside, dried her wet hair with a towel, and scooped her up off the bed entirely, cradling her against his shoulder.

“Terra…?” she asked, thinking she ought to protest, to wriggle free, to insist he put her down, but she couldn’t find the energy.

“I’ve got you,” he said, and that simple thought seemed simultaneously incredibly obvious and a matchless epiphany.

She fell asleep, then, as he carried her down the hall, but she wasn’t aware of that so much as she was aware that she woke back up a little bit later to words rumbling in Terra’s chest just beside her ear. She heard the creak of Terra’s door where he’d never quite gotten around to oiling it, and he carried her inside, the door creaking shut behind them and then a second pair of soft, almost catlike footsteps.

“Ven’s here,” she mumbled into Terra’s chest, looking for confirmation of her suspicion.

Ven peered up over Aqua’s knees with a bright smile. “Mmhm. Go on back to sleep, Aqua.”

She mumbled something in dissent, which the boys ignored other than Terra’s warm, soft chuckle under her ear, and he gently lay her down on his bed, sliding in under her so that her head rested against his leg.

Against her intent, she settled down quickly enough, barely noticing that Ven climbed up to sit beside Terra until she felt the bed shift under his weight. Terra’s fingers ran through her hair, petting and combing through the blue strands until she felt limp and boneless, focusing on the warmth of his hand, of his leg under her head. His clothes smelled like the laundry, and just a little further off was Ven, leaning against Terra’s shoulder and murmuring to him now and then.

She supposed she heard a little, something about how Ven was quite tired of sleeping, having slept for over ten years, and wanted to help look after her. This was followed by a soft chuckle, then by Terra’s cautious acceptance, conveyed via a soft hum and a few indistinct words.

Ven’s fingers, smaller, more lithe, and a little more deft, slid through her hair once, to tuck it behind her ear, and without entirely meaning to, a smile curled on her face. Ven pulled a light blanket up over her, and she shifted once, getting comfortable against Terra’s leg and finally settling in to sleep, grateful for the boys.

_Just this once_ , she thought, just before she drifted off altogether,  _maybe she **could** let them look after _ _her_.


	2. Fragments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [[[DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED 2.8'S A FRAGMENTARY PASSAGE]]]
> 
> _(Chronologically this chapter takes place during Riku's installment: after Terra's second chapter but before Sora's and Lea's.)_

Time, ever the neutral arbiter, marches tirelessly on. They help what they can, heal what they can’t, and generally they all try to make the castle’s other residents’ lives a little easier. Terra finds his balance and stops stealing her soap (she never tells him she knew he was the one taking them, but that’s okay). Ven sleeps in their room. They spar with Kairi.

Riku suffers in silence. Terra goes to talk to him.

And in the quiet, Aqua has a moment of peace. Sora and Kairi are taking a break for the evening; Terra and Riku are occupied.

She is alone with her thoughts.

She is better, now, though. She startles less. She _suffers_ less. Her nightmares may never go away entirely, but she has learned, in her own small ways, how to manage them, and that is enough for now.

Terra’s room is too big and too empty without him there, and she takes a moment to go back to her own room and gather some of her things. She stops at the basin in the corner and for a moment, catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her hair’s getting long. A little too long for comfort, really. She makes a face and detours, stops just in front of the mirror in order to examine it, tugging at strands and fussing at it with her fingers. She fluffs it, a cloud of rainy blue around her face that makes her eyes a little deeper, a little older.

Just for a moment, she sees it. Something that makes her blood run cold, makes her heart skip two beats, makes her hands lash out before coherent thought has coalesced into anything functional. She doesn’t even reach for her keyblade, she just strikes.

Just for a moment, her reflection moved without her.

The sound of shattering glass is deafening.

_Only your heart is hollow enough to be a demon’s._

The pain follows a second too late; neurons firing as an afterthought even as she’s breathlessly examining her fractured reflection in the spiderwebbed surface of her broken mirror. She slowly, with an effort of will, pulls her fists back from the glass. Shards fall away from her skin and she becomes dimly aware that blood is beading up and dripping away from lines and chevrons of broken skin across her knuckles.

_You’ll never see the Realm of Light again._

Some part of her realizes she can hear shoes pounding down the hall outside, but all her focus is on the glass. She can’t breathe, suffocating in memory. She keeps her gaze on her reflection’s hands, waiting for one to emerge from the surface and grab her.

_No one can save you. And no one wants to_.

The sensation of her mirror self pushing her face into the running sink, holding her until she inhales water and chokes on it, feels so real she doesn’t realize it _isn’t_ until Ven’s voice cracks her focus.

“ _Aqua!_ ”

Time snaps back into place. Ven grabs her by the arm and tugs her away from the mirror, out of its line of sight. She imagines, for a moment, her reflection shouting in rage, but she crosses the edge like a magical binding, and the reflection ceases to exist. Ven presses Aqua down until she sits on the edge of her bed.

“Aqua? What happened? _Aqua!_ ”

She inhales, sharp. Her lungs burn – did she _forget_ to breathe? – and Ven sighs in relief, gently cupping her face with both his hands. “Come back to me,” he whispers, and presses his lips to her forehead.

The warmth of it rattles her, the tender press of a mouth that belongs to someone _alive_ , someone who won’t taunt her from inside a wrought-iron frame of silvered glass.

“Ven,” she whispers, like she’s only just remembered it’s him.

“I’m here,” he says, and pulls away so that he can look her in the eye. “Aqua, I’m here.”

“I scared you,” she realizes. Guilt gnaws at her chest and she squeezes her eyes shut. The shattered reflection she saw in the mirror seems suddenly very real. Even now, she is falling apart, and couldn’t see it.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Shh,” Ven says, and cradles her hands in his palms. “Don’t.” His gaze drops and he examines the bloodied splits in her knuckles. “Do you want me to..." He trails off, and she looks down at her hands. The dull, distant, rhythmic thump of her heart feels like a throbbing drumbeat in her knuckles.

“No, I…” She struggles to find the words. “It feels real,” she says, with a helpless shrug of a shoulder.

He watches her face for a moment, and she is suddenly very afraid that he doesn’t understand, that he will press, that he will ask.

“I’ll get the first-aid kit,” he says. His voice is soft, aching, and guilt fights sympathy. With his thumbs he very gently squeezes her hands in the middle, where it doesn’t hurt as much. He leaves, and she examines her hands again, watching with a strange, horrible fascination the red streaks across her fingers where blood has dripped.

Ven returns with a bowl of water, a cloth, and the kit. He drags her desk chair over and sits on it, setting the bowl in his lap under her fingers. He rinses her knuckles first, gently wiping away blood and little flecks of glass. His hands are gentle, and he doesn’t speak.

“Didn’t know you knew how to do this,” she says after a moment, as he opens the kit and wets a clean cloth with disinfectant. It stings horrendously, but it feels like something real, and that helps keep her grounded.

His smile is familiar, and only a little distracted. “I paid attention when Sora’s mom patched him up. He got into so many scrapes when he was little,” he muses.

He lays gauze over her hands and gently, but firmly, wraps her knuckles.

“It’s a little different doing it than watching,” he adds thoughtfully. “But the theory’s pretty solid.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t..." She hesitates, her breath catching in her throat. “Come for you sooner.”

“It’s okay,” he says, and the gentle smile he says it with makes her want to cry. “I needed time to heal, anyway. To rest. To..." He purses his lips, searching for words. “To be whole again.”

“Whole?”

“Vanitas,” he explains, and he sets the bowl of bloodied water aside with the kit. Even a decade later, rage surges in her chest. She can still imagine him, the boy in the mask, snapping Terra’s little keyblade like it were a twig. Ven shrugs a shoulder. “When we joined... he didn’t like it. It’s what he wanted, or, maybe what he thought he wanted? But he didn’t, not really. So it took a long time, to accept that we were just mirrors of each other.”

She stiffens. He looks up at her.

“Mirrors,” she says quietly, and his gaze flicks to the shattered one in her corner.

“Aqua..." he says, gathering thoughts.

“When I was in the Realm of Darkness,” she says abruptly, to save him from trying to find the gentler ways to ask. “I fought a. Copy of myself. Some manifestation of the Darkness, exploiting the.” She hesitates. “Weaknesses, of my heart. I guess.”

Ven nods.

“I thought.” She sighs, shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. I just. I thought it was happening again.”

“I understand,” he says softly, and very gently squeezes her hands, holding them over his knees. “Terra would probably say this better. But just remember. You’re not there anymore.” She frowns, and he shakes his head, very slightly shaking her hands to keep her from interrupting. “You’re not there anymore. You’re not alone. You can ask us for help. If you’re ever not sure if you’re seeing something real. If anything at all.”

She blinks back tears and looks down, shutting her eyes again. “Okay.”

“Any time you need,” he says, soft. “I know a thing or two about the illusions created by hearts under stress.”

Her laugh is weak, and a little halting and wet, but still she laughs, and he squeezes gently again.

“Thanks, Ven,” she whispers, and he stands, wraps his arms around her shoulders. She presses her face to his chest, and just for a moment, she lets herself _listen_ , listen to the steady bass beat of his heart under his skin.

He’s _real_.

And besides, she thinks, while Ven gently rubs her back and doesn’t comment when her gauze-wrapped fingers curl clumsily into the back of his coat. Everything her phantom had ever said was wrong.

She didn’t have to listen to it anymore.


End file.
